Listen to this article

No sooner has Sophie Ellis-Bextor twirled off the set of Strictly Come Dancing than she’s turned her back on dance music for good. Or so it seems from Wanderlust, which recasts the “Murder on the Dancefloor” singer as a polished adult contemporary artist, delivering a string-laden ode to the joys of growing old with one’s spouse on “Young Blood” and doing Duffy-style retro-pop on “Wrong Side of the Sun”. She sings with more feeling than her electro-pop days but the album suffers from a plodding pace, with only “13 Little Dolls” breaking into anything approaching a jig.